Destruction of Reason Quotes

“So here again we may clearly observe the contrast with the Enlightenment, with which individual commentators have tried to associate Nietzsche because of his atheism. In the Enlightenment, the idea was to prove that belief in God might not signify any kind of moral imperative for mankind, that the moral laws would operate in a society of atheists just as much as in one where religious patronage held sway. Nietzsche, on the contrary, wanted to show that the demise of the idea of God (or the death of God) would entail a moral renaissance in the sense we have noted above. Apart, therefore, from the other ethical contradictions in the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Enlightenment, about which we again already know Nietzsche’s opinion, we find another contrast here in respect of the socio-ethical role of religion. The ‘old’ Enlightenment regarded the religious concept as irrelevant to men’s morality, actions, views etc., which in reality were adequately determined by a combination of society and men’s reason. On the other hand, Nietzsche — and here he far exceeded all Feuerbach’s weaknesses in the realm of historico-philosophical idealism — regarded the switch to atheism as a turning point for morality.
(At this point let us just briefly remark that here Nietzsche’s worldview is very close to certain tendencies in Dostoievsky.)”
― György Lukács, Destruction of Reason

“Just this union of an ingeniously decadent individualism with an imperialist commonalty of reactionary hue - a union full of tensions and paradoxes - decided the duration of Nietzsche's influence in the imperialist age and caused it to survive particularities.”
― György Lukács, Destruction of Reason